6(a)

In my music impulses are clearly defined and are characterized by their attack, speed and rotation. Impulses within one constellation are basically all the same pitch, although they may occur as noise.

The first requirement for the performance of impulses is to place the musicians according to the instructions in the score. A good spatial arrangement is essential for the achievement of the rotation of the impulses. The basic principle is that the musicians pass the impulse on to one another.

The impulse’s attack is always accentuated (though without exaggeration,) short, and clearly perceptible. The speed of the impulse is determined by the interval between entries. These must therefore be performed with as much rhythmic precision as possible. A rotating impulse moves clockwise or anti-clockwise, and can change direction. This will work particularly well if the musicians are aware of the direction in which the impulse is moving: where is it approaching you from, and in what direction are you going to pass it on? The rotations can assume any number of motion patterns: see the example from Axis/Ashes. An impulse can be identified in the score by a circled dynamic mark.

All other composed elements of the impulse are secondary: the held impulse tone (i.e. the tone that follows the attack,) dynamics and pitch should be performed as neutrally as possible.

Impulses are seldom tones that should be cut off! Even with short notes the attack leads to an impulse tone that ›stays floating in the air.‹ Where I have notated longer impulse tones, it is purely and simply to show that I do not want silence until the following entry.

The dynamics indicate nothing more than the average volume of an impulse tone within the context, and do not relate to the strength of the attack. In the case of rotation, the musicians take the impulses over from each other. In this process the differences and alterations in timbre are more important than the pitch, which is no more than a reminiscence of the tone which provides cohesion within this ›Klangfarbenmelodie‹ (melody of sound colours,) which incidentally possesses no melodic quality. (Translation: Robert Coupe)

5(a)

Within the context of electronic music, an impulse is a current surge that you hear as a click. The impulse is in itself musically neutral, but it can cause an object to vibrate, thus producing something that is musical. In this process the ›momentum‹ of the object alters. This phenomenon has splendid physical implications which have inspired me: such as the transfer of the angular momentum from the one element to the other in a system where the elements are circling around. In this way stars can be formed from rotating protoplanetary disks. In much of my music a circling impulse opens up a space in which a moment can settle itself. (Cf. Music and Space in: Notes – No Notes.) Thus impulses render the emptiness of space audible – emptiness versus silence – as the entry and exit for music. But the rotating impulse constellations are also the world of elements made audible – elements that are not yet music, or are no longer music. The philosopher Levinas calls this indeterminate world of the elements ›the elemental.‹ [See: Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et Infini, The Hague 1974; part 2, chapter 2.] The rotating impulse constellation is an interval in the manifestation of musical significance, where the musical presence is reduced to a state of not-yet-existing or no-longer-existing; an in-between moment during which the musical elements redeploy or gather together in their neutral quality; a zero moment at which the identity of musical forms dissolves or is prepared.

Impulses, at least in theory (see: ›Impulses – 1‹,) give elements the initial impetus to interact with each other to arrive at musical forms: groups, shapes, gestures, melodies, harmony…; potential forms which can become embedded in our memory.

In ›Impulses – 3‹ I shall explain how the impulses in my compositions should be interpreted and performed. (Translation: Robert Coupe)

4(a)

For a long time it was my dream to start the day by playing sequences of electronic pulses which would move around my study at different speeds, with the distance between the pulses’ entries being able to be varied, from long intervals to coagulations so dense they would – just for a moment – give rise to a held note. I have never made this dream reality at home, but I have in many different ways in pretty well all my compositions. The notion of these ›impulses‹, with the fascinating properties I’ve described, came, of course, from Stockhausen. Around the time of the conception of La disciplina dei sentimenti and Genieting 1 I was engaged in a prolonged study of his Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik (Cologne, 1963.) An account of this period of research can be read in the Dutch Journal of Music Theory under the title ›Een lezing voor New York‹ (Amsterdam, 2001.) The article is based on a lecture that I gave in New York in 1995. The most important aspect to emerge from this article was the idea that impulses determined the structure and the course of my music, and that they did so from within and at any moment: that is to say that they could immediately bring about something in the music; as opposed to prefabricated structures, which were designed prior to the genesis of the music. Whether I have succeeded in applying impulses in this way remains, for as long as I continue applying them, an open question. It is, however, a fact that they still fascinate me, also for other reasons, which I will write about in ›Impulses – 2.‹ In ›Impulses – 3‹ I shall explain how they should be interpreted and performed. (Translation: Robert Coupe)